


Apologies

by lilaclily00



Series: Danny/Valerie Roleswap!AU [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: AU, D/V Roleswap!AU, Danny/Valerie Roleswap!AU, Gen, roleswap!Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2019-11-27 22:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18199904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilaclily00/pseuds/lilaclily00
Summary: Danny Fenton secretly sort-of joins the family business.





	1. Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Crossposting from Tumblr. Here's the original link: https://lilaclily00.tumblr.com/post/183478135417/apologies
> 
> This is pretty much a continuation of "Phoenix".
> 
> On with the story!

Valerie was thankful for the weekend, so she could sleep it all away. Her dad seemed to think she had come down with a cold, seeing as he left her a glass of water and a bit of hot soup before heading to work. She didn’t blame him; she felt too hot in her chest and too cold everywhere else, and it showed. That didn’t even take into account how she also felt exhausted yet jittery, pained by suddenly enhanced senses, and just  _pain_ left over from the accident yesterday.  
  
She would’ve stayed dead to the world–wait, that was a  _very_  poor choice of wording,  _don’t think about that_ - _-_ if she hadn’t been woken up by her own shivering around lunchtime. She opened her eyes with a groan, then screamed as she suddenly realized she had floated up out of bed, then screamed again as she suddenly fell, fell, fell, down through her floor into the living room. She went tangible again just in time to dangle from one arm stuck through the ceiling.  
  
“Okay, okay, calm down, you can’t get out unless you calm down,” she told herself, trying to take a deep breath. After a few tries she finally managed some semblance of calm, then there was a knock at the front door.

She felt herself begin to panic again until “Val, it’s Kwan!” was shouted from outside.  
  
“Is anyone with you?” she shouted back, wincing at her own voice. Did she always talk that loud? Everything sounded way too loud.  
  
“No, just me! I’m coming in!” The door opened, and Kwan nearly dropped the plastic bag in his arms as he caught sight of pajama-clad Valerie miserably hanging from the ceiling, red barely tinging her face. “Are you okay?!”  
  
“Kind of? It doesn’t hurt,” she assured him, “I just, uh, am trying to figure out how…”  
  
Kwan dropped his bag on the couch, then stood by her, reaching for her waist. “Maybe try relaxing more? I’ll catch you.”  
  
After a few more deep breaths, Valerie dropped, and Kwan eased her down to steady ground. She thanked him quietly as she took in the feeling of the floor on her bare feet, the chill on her arms, the fact that all parts of her were visible and solid.  
  
When she looked back up to him, she realized there were bandages on his cheek and jawline, drifting a little down his neck. “How’s your burn?” she asked quietly as he guided her over to the couch.

“It hurts, but I’ve felt worse.” He had already schooled his facial expression back to his typical bored one. “And I take it  _you_  haven’t felt any better than yesterday.”  
  
She considered a snarky retort, but she was too exhausted for sarcasm, and she didn’t want to downplay her friend’s genuine concern. He wouldn’t care about acting like he didn’t care unless he  _did_  care. Valerie had never reflected on that before, that all her friends tended to show the opposite of what they were really feeling, until now. She probably did that without realizing, too. She decided to save thinking on that for later as she carefully sat herself down, ensuring she didn’t go  _through_  the cushion. “No, I haven’t.”  
  
“So whatever this is might be… permanent?” Kwan continued, sounding nonchalant as he pulled over the plastic bag and poured out two Tupperwares, fogged over in their insides.  
  
“I hope not, but I really don’t know.” Valerie accepted the Tupperware Kwan offered, curiosity flitting across her face as she pulled off the lid. A puff of steam lazily rose up. It was fluffy white rice with his mom’s famous bulgogi. She felt a surge of warmth at the gesture, yet a surprising amount of anger. “You know this wasn’t your fault,  _at all,_ right?”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Kwan popped his own open as well, then held out a pair of chopsticks for her.  
  
“You only go out of your way to do stuff like this when you feel guilty!” Valerie ignored the chopsticks and pressed the lid right back onto the bulgogi on her lap. It looked delicious and  _so_  tempting, but she needed to make a point first. “I appreciate it, but not if it’s just to try to make it up to me, especially if you didn’t even do anything wrong.”  
  
Kwan sighed, mask pulling away a little. “Maybe I didn’t do the  _most_ stupid stuff yesterday, but we were all stupid, Val. I felt like I should at least try to own up to it.” He scratched at the bandage on his cheek, then glanced at her, almost like a quick check-up that she was still in one piece. “I think it’s gonna take everyone else a few days to, uh, stop freaking out.”

She suspected as much. It wasn’t every day your friend got zapped by a portal. She didn’t really blame any of them–no one could’ve expected that to happen. (She mostly blamed the Fentons for putting the “on” button  _inside_  the portal. That was just idiotic!) And, well, she wasn’t sure they would really make her feel better right now; she loved her friends, but sometimes they didn’t really know what to do to be good friends.

“I can deal with that, as long as they do come back.” Valerie’s eyes flitted up to Kwan. “Thank you for the food, and for being here, but I mostly just want to know I’m not alone in this, not that you’re gonna try to… pay me back all the time.”

Kwan took a second to think, then slowly nodded. “I think I can do that.” He held out the chopsticks to her again. She decided to accept them this time, but they quite literally fell out of her grip. She took another deep breath–she was  _not_  going to let her temper get in the way of eating this masterpiece–and succeeded on grabbing them after a couple more tries. She felt a rush of victory as she opened her Tupperware once again and began to chow down without losing her grip on anything.

“Let’s hope you figure that out by Monday,” Kwan merely said as he, otherwise, ate silently next to her.

* * *

Sunday, she mostly spent hiding away in her room, practicing her control on her invisibility and intangibility. It was still very shaky, but at least she felt a little more confident by the afternoon, and dared to stay in sight of her dad for more than a couple minutes. As much as she enjoyed hanging out with him, making dinner together, she was still distracted by the happenings of the past couple days.

She wore a thick sweater, and regretted wearing her usual skirt, to school on Monday. She got a couple strange looks, considering how it was still pretty warm for October, but apparently had faked normality well otherwise. She had continually dropped her pencil while trying to take Lancer’s surprisingly difficult quiz, lunch was a little awkward with her friends glancing at her worriedly the whole time, and having PE outside was a shivery hell… but that was it.

She would’ve hesitantly called the day a success if it wasn’t for overhearing a certain group of losers talking in the hallway after the final bell.

“I dunno, it looks like it was just a freak accident while we were gone. A really, really bad one.” Danny sighed as he shoved books into his locker. Valerie barely slowed down by them, then hid behind the row of lockers. “Now my parents are insanely paranoid, and don’t want to leave the lab even more than usual.”

The kid she was pretty sure was named Tucker said, “They did lose a  _lot_  of their work in there. I don’t blame them.”

“I don’t either, but it still sucks. I hardly saw them that much in the first place. Now, the only ‘family time’ left is throwing away ecto-contaminated junk.” She winced at how loudly he slammed his locker closed.

The goth girl added, “Should we help you guys clean up?”

Their footsteps sounded, and Danny’s voice slowly drifted away. “Nah, I think we’ll be okay. I don’t want to put you guys through that torture. Thanks, though.”

Valerie would never admit how hard she startled at the tap on her shoulder. She turned, instinctively going into a defensive stance, then wilted back out of it when she saw Star standing there, wary and staring at her eyes. “Sorry about that, Star, what’s up?”

“Well, I was going to ask why you were over here, but… you should probably fix your eyes, first.” Star hesitated, then whispered, “They’re red right now.”

“What?” The realization hit her. “Oh. Uh, let’s go to the bathroom.”

They rushed in, and Valerie groaned at her reflection in the grimy mirror. “I didn’t even know I could  _do_  that.” Her usual hazel eyes were glowing bright red instead. “Thanks for catching it.” She closed her eyes, let out her breath, then slowly opened them again. They were still red.

“I’ll grab your sunglasses,” Star offered, reaching into Valerie’s backpack. She passed them over, and Valerie put them on. Thank goodness class was already over for the day; she looked ridiculous wearing them inside.

Both girls flinched when the bathroom door opened, but in came Paulina. “Oh, hi!” Paulina grinned a little awkwardly. “I like your shades, Val.”

“Please don’t talk about how I look today, girl.” Valerie shook her head at her reflection. “I… I feel like we should tell the Fentons we–”

“No way, Val!” Paulina nearly screeched, then held her hands over her mouth, glancing around to see if anyone else heard her outburst. She continued, not quite as loud, “We are  _not_  going to get, like, arrested or something! My  _papá_  would kill me!”

Valerie turned to face her, Star watching the two nervously. “But we left their lab an utter disaster! We have to take some kind of responsibility for that.”

“What if they, like, sue us?”

“I don’t think they can do that, we’re just minors.” Valerie sagged against the sink, rubbing at her face. “But we knew it was a bad idea to go down there, even though what happened was… unexpected.” Valerie pushed her sunglasses further up her nose. “But we still knew  _something_  could happen. And if they know there was an accident, maybe they’ll know how to fix it. Fix  _me._ ”

“Have you told your dad?” Star interrupted, hugging her arms.

“Well, no…” Valerie bristled when Paulina scoffed. “It’s not like my dad could really help me, unlike the Fentons! He’s at Axion, but my dad is still a security tech guy, not a scientist. I’d rather go to them first, so he doesn’t worry himself to death as much.”

“But we don’t know if they can do anything, anyway. And we can’t help them.” Paulina looked away, pouting. “I don’t want to just get ourselves in trouble when we don’t know what will really happen.”

After a tense silence, Valerie said, “Whatever happens to us can’t be worse than what the Fentons are going through now.” She’d never gone broke before, but it definitely seemed like a nightmare.

Another girl walked in, slowing when the three popular girls instantly turned to glare at her. Valerie stopped first, sighing as she trudged back out.

“You better not,” Paulina tacked on. Star elbowed her for that.

“Fine, I won’t,” Valerie told her, turning around to lower her sunglasses at Paulina, who flinched at her red eyes. “But I’m still going to do  _something_.” She walked out before either girl could question her further.

* * *

She dropped off her backpack at her house, changed into even warmer clothes, and munched on an apple as she trekked her way back to FentonWorks–this time, alone. She had the suspicion that she should not give herself time to think more on visiting their lab again, because she’d end up not doing it at all. That was not what the Fentons deserved.

But  _man,_ this was going to be awkward, she had to admit to herself as she came up their porch and, after a full minute of hesitation, rang the doorbell. She suddenly felt the need to check that all of her looked human, and was in the middle of checking her eyes in her camera phone when the door opened, revealing a curvy woman in a tight blue hazmat suit. She hurriedly put her phone away as the woman she assumed to be Danny’s mom studied her curiously.

“Uh, hi, I’m Valerie!” She hid her hands behind her back; her invisibility was likely to act up with this sudden stress. “I’m in Danny’s class. I heard that, uh…” She wasn’t really sure how to phrase that part without sounding like she knew too much. “I guess I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help?”

Thankfully, his mom seemed to catch what she hadn’t said aloud, and raised her eyebrows, impressed. A soft smile spread on her face. “That is very sweet of you, Valerie. I’m happy to know there’s kids like you looking out for our Danny. We mostly need to just clean out our lab, but I don’t feel comfortable with exposing you to all that contamination.” Valerie doubted a little more ectoplasm would really affect her after getting whammed with it so hard a couple days ago, but she didn’t say that. “If something different comes up that we need help with, though, I’ll be sure to let your parents know. What’re their names?”

Valerie internally groaned; she hated when adults did this, since her dad would probably forget to ever pass along any messages until it was too late. “My dad’s Damon Gray.”

“Oh, I know him! Such a nice man, who clearly raised a wonderful daughter.” His mom gave her a final smile. “Thank you again for your concern. For now, I just want to ask you to be a friend to Danny, okay?”

Valerie blinked at the request. “Uh, sure, Mrs. Fenton.”

After exchanging farewells, Valerie found herself back on the sidewalk, staring up at the gaudy extensions to the Fentons’ house. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t expect a mom to ask something like that out of some random kid.

Thinking on it more, she wasn’t sure how she felt about being instructed to explicitly hang out with one of Casper High’s outcasts; she would definitely get some grief from her friends for that. She’d be risking her own social standing as well as theirs. She couldn’t imagine getting along with him particularly well, either, not with what she knew about him (which wasn’t much, but certainly enough).

Considering how she had  _asked_  how to help in the first place, though, the least she could do was try. She could perhaps also gain some information that could help with her… situation from him, though that was second priority.

She wasn’t done here, after all.

She moved down a few houses, to the backyard of that one house that she was pretty sure was abandoned, and hid the best she could from any prying eyes. Without express permission to go into the Fentons’ basement in human form, her next best shot was going in looking like a ghost–which was  _risky_ , even if most of their ghost hunting equipment was out of commission.

Now, if only she knew how to trigger the transformation… It had nearly been by accident and utter exhaustion that she had managed to shift back to her normal self soon after coming out of the portal.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember how it felt when she was the kind-of ghost–like the burning in her chest had been spread and thinned out throughout her body, making her feel light and disconnected from the normal sensations that came with being human. She prodded at the hot ball by her heart, beckoning it to open up. It gladly did so, with a great flash of light. She instinctively covered her eyes, even though the light was coming from everywhere. When it finally stopped, she lowered her arms. She let out a much-too-loud breath, then didn’t feel the need to breathe again. She opened her eyes, and was enraptured by the slick black-and-red suit on her, tight and baggy in the same places the normal hazmat suit had been. White locks poured over her shoulders, ethereal and Medusa-esque, vaguely floating on a nonexistent breeze. She stood straight–balance was hard to find when you could barely feel the ground or  _anything_ –and turned back toward Fentonworks.

Everything was disorienting, with seeing everything in a different color spectrum and hearing at new frequencies and feeling nearly numb because her skin had no substance anymore. Nonetheless, she figured out how to walk, and turned herself invisible before reaching the sidewalk. She carefully stepped all the way up to their door, then through it. It almost seemed too easy, but any sort of anti-ghost system they had up surely didn’t work at the moment. Nonetheless, she felt incredibly paranoid that some sort of alarm would go off as she continued into their house, past noises in the kitchen, and through the basement door. She floated more than stepped down the staircase, and sighed with relief when, miraculously, no one was downstairs at the moment.

“Okay, what to do…” she muttered to herself as she looked around. The mess made of their lab barely looked any better than when she had last seen it, though the tables were indeed emptier. Sticky-notes were tacked onto various remaining equipment, marking how to save or dispose of them. However, her eyes were immediately drawn to the char radiating from the metal-plated hole in the wall. She startled at a spark that jumped off the portal’s rim as she neared it. She remembered the portal still being on when they left, but perhaps that had just been the light sensitivity and ringing ears she’d experienced for the rest of the night.

She noticed a sticky-note on the wall. “The Fenton Portal is salvageable, I know it!” was scrawled onto it. Probably one of Danny’s parents, she decided. Considering how the portal  _had_ actually worked, even if it wasn’t for long, Valerie had to agree they could probably get it running again. She bit her lip, debating. Helping to fix the crown achievement of their research could maybe make up for the destruction, right? And they’d likely be more willing to help fix her… condition in return, right?

It was hard to convince herself to stand any closer to the thing that had, from her understanding, just about killed her. She managed it, though, and carefully brushed away unrecognizable metal debris from the inside of the portal out. Once cleared, she looked around for available tools to tighten up the rim and inside walls of the portal.

She kept her eyes trained often on the staircase, when she didn’t have to devote her focus on floating or not floating or keeping her grip on the screwdriver. She could hear murmurings upstairs. Why hadn’t anyone come down here yet? Were they having family dinner? Was Mrs. Fenton talking about the one girl who came up to their door a while ago? Was Danny talking trash about her? Probably, since the school losers always had something against the A-listers (with Dash and Kwan bullying them, she could see why, but  _she_  wasn’t like that!).

She was probably supposed to have started dinner for herself and her dad by now, actually… She could come up with some kind of excuse. She had to take this chance while she had it.

She stepped back, all wires tucked back in and metal plates secured. She looked back at that power cord Star had stepped on–the little switch was off. She glanced back at the portal, then bent down to flip the switch on. Now all that was left was to press the button in the inside… without dying all the way.

She couldn’t just do it while inside again, obviously. But if she used some kind of object to do it in her stead, then that would probably interfere and cause an explosion, like the first time…

Her thoughts were interrupted by the creak of the basement door. She felt a spike of panic as she rushed to put the tools back where she had found them. It had just barely registered that she lost her invisibility at some point when, surprisingly, Danny was the one that came around the bend, carrying a box with heavy rubber gloves. He nearly fell back up the stairs when he spotted her.

“You–you’re a–” Danny stuttered out, face quickly paling. “A ghost!”

“Sshh!” Valerie held her finger up to her mouth, dropping from the air to stand on the ground. It was much too late to go invisible now; it would probably just freak him out even more. “It’s okay, I don’t mean any harm! Look, I’ll leave right now–”

“A–and go where?” Danny asked, limbs shaking. How much of that had to do with the box’s weight or his fear, she wasn’t sure.

“Just–home, I guess?” Valerie realized she wasn’t going to make him feel better if she didn’t give firmer answers. “Yes, I’m going straight home.”

“By 'home’, do you mean…?” Danny glanced over to the Ghost Portal, and Valerie mentally kicked herself as he started to put pieces together, though they weren’t quite right. “You’re trying to open the portal!”

Valerie waved her arms as he rushed to a table to drop the box there, over by another open one. “It’s not what you think! I wanted to help fix something because of what happened to the lab, and…” She stopped when his eyes narrowed at her.

“I don’t think I can believe you wanting to fix something unless it benefits you, ghost,” he stated with a little venom. Valerie blinked at how quickly the fear had drained out of his voice. “And you realize this is a  _ghost-hunting_  lab, yeah?”

“No, I promise it was for you guys! I just–” She gestured helplessly to the whole room, words lost in her panic. She didn’t know how to respond to this situation, especially with a kid she barely knew.

Danny mostly kept his eyes on her, only flickering down to the open box to begin rummaging through it with one hand. After doing some mental calculations, he began slowly, “Either you’re some ghost that’s really into tech or cleaning or something, or…” His mouth pulled further down into a frown. “You’re responsible for ruining everything in here.”

“Well, you caught me! I’m a cleaning lady ghost! I sure hoped you Fentons wouldn’t catch me on duty!” Valerie slowly stepped further away from him. Danny further tensed, and his arm stilled from searching in the box, which did not seem to be a good sign. “Like I said, I gotta go…”

“The kind of damage in here just couldn’t come from a freak accident, even I could tell. Someone came in here and did it on purpose.” Danny pulled an ecto-gun out of the box; he didn’t seem familiar with it, and hadn’t actually pointed it at her, but the look on his face showed he wasn’t bluffing. “Are  _you_  the reason my parents have lost all their work?”

“I didn’t mean it!” Valerie blurted out. She willed herself invisible at the same time that Danny aimed the gun. She barely dodged the beam he’d shot at her, then zoomed up through the ceiling, flying intangibly out of the house.

She didn’t stop until she made it to her own home, crash-landing into her bedroom. She was almost grateful to still be a ghost at the moment, so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed with her normal human senses and functions (her heartbeat would be shot through the roof!) on top of the turmoil going on in her brain.

Man, she never expected something like  _that_  out of that wimp.

She didn’t think Danny cared about his parents’ jobs all that much in the first place. She had only heard about their ghost-hunting through the long Casper High grapevine, because he never mentioned it of his own volition to anyone. Though, she supposed she would be very angry if she thought her dad lost his career because of a ghost, too…

She’d been looking for redemption but then messed up even harder. Danny would probably tell his parents about this encounter, and now they’d  _never_ be willing to listen. Why would they help a ghost that made their lab explode? Why would they help a ghost in the first place?

She flopped onto her bed, not even caring that she was mostly phased through it. She hadn’t even properly said to him, “I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We didn't expect something like that out of that wimp either, home-gurl.
> 
> (Posted on Tumblr Mar. 15, 2019.)


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny Fenton secretly sort-of joins the family business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original link: https://lilaclily00.tumblr.com/post/183579439002/apologies-2
> 
> On with the story!

Danny didn’t know how it happened, but one of the shots he fired went into the portal and got it to start up. He stumbled back and blocked the burst of light from his face. He had finally adjusted and put his arms down by the time the footsteps bumbling down the stairs had stopped at his side.

“What’s happening down he–” His mom paused as she stared into the green abyss in the wall.

“You fixed the portal, Danny-boy? You fixed it! It works!” Danny grunted as his father crushed him in a hug so suddenly he dropped the ecto-gun, which broke apart on impact with the ground. “That’s my son!”

“How’d you do that?” Jazz asked, a  _little_  too skeptical, earning a glare from Danny as he was finally let go.

“Now, Jazz, you know your brother’s very smart, too. It runs in the family.” Their mom ruffled Danny’s hair; he was still a little too focused on that ghost girl to appreciate it. He had no idea if she was still in the lab, or had run off to somewhere else in town, or made the escape back “home” through the portal the second she could. “Perhaps I should start having you kids help us in the lab more!”

Their dad patted the portal’s rim affectionately. “Oh, it’ll be a snap to get a new grant once we tell ‘em this baby’s on and running!”

“Now, Jack, we don’t know if it even goes to the Ghost Zone yet,” their mom chastised him gently, though excitement sparkled in her eyes. “Would you kids like to help run the tests?”

“Later. I think I’ll head up to my room for a bit,” Danny said, rushing up the stairs. He did  _not_  have the energy or patience for that right now. He also had to go inform Sam and Tucker about the ghost girl–he could count on them to help him deal with her if he ran into her again. No,  _when_ –he was not going to let her go without any consequences.

She had no right to ruin their lives. It only seemed fair to ruin her afterlife right back.

* * *

“Dude, are you sure about this?” Tucker peered over his best friend’s shoulder, scrunching his nose at the otherworldly smell wafting from the box. Sam glanced back at the door of the shed, impatiently tapping her foot.

“What, you don’t believe me?” Danny muttered, not quite hiding a bitter tone as he pulled contaminated, broken contraptions out from the next box. Where was that little laser, he swore it was in here…

“We do!” Sam protested, pulling at the wrists of her gloves. “I just–”

“Can’t condone the use of violence, I know. It’s not like it’ll  _really_  hurt her, she doesn’t have nerves,” Danny reminded. He’d heard his mom say that about ghosts a while ago. He grinned when he recovered the laser at the very bottom, holding it out like a trophy then setting it aside.

“Well, yeah,” she assented, frown forming, “but it also just seems a little too dangerous to use old equipment to hunt her down.”

Tucker kneeled to help Danny throw the scraps back in. “Yeah, man. Your parents, the leading experts in ghost-hunting tech, thought this stuff wasn’t worth keeping anymore.”

“Because they don’t have the time to fix them, not with trying to get their grants again, which are all for their newer projects.” Danny slapped the top flaps of the box down and carefully laid the “CAUTION: ECTOPLASMIC WASTE” tape back over. “We, however,  _do_  have the time.”

“Yup, time to contaminate ourselves for a senseless need for revenge.” Sam crossed her arms, defiant as Danny stood up to face her, gloves tensed up into fists.

“You don’t get it, do you? You don’t even care, do you?!” Danny didn’t notice his friends flinch. “We pretty much lost everything because of a  _ghost_! They had all the anti-ghost systems on, but she somehow got through all of them! We can’t take a  _ghost_  to court, and–” Danny closed his eyes and let out a huff. His friends didn’t deserve to get yelled at like this. He opened them again, gaze fixed on his hazmat boots, then continued quieter, “And all the credibility my parents had is wiped out. The fact that the portal started will help, but still.” He dropped down to the concrete floor of the shed, sitting as he pulled his glove off to scratch at his hair. “I haven’t ever been into ghost-hunting, you know that, but my parents really don’t deserve this. It’s the only way I can help, you know?”

“Is… that why you haven’t told them about the ghost girl?” Tucker shuffled to sit by his friend.

Danny nodded, glancing between his friends’ wide eyes. “Yeah. I want to take her down myself.”

* * *

School was surprisingly normal, except for Dash. Dash was acting weird.

With how distracted he had been on Monday, he hadn’t noticed that Dash never bothered him, but it became increasingly noticeable over the next couple days. Danny passed by him and Kwan wailing on other kids in the halls, but he wasn’t even acknowledged.

“Why is Dash ignoring me?” Danny whispered to his friends at Tucker’s locker. “It’s driving me crazy! I don’t know what this means!”

“I’d take it as a stroke of luck and not question a good thing,” Tucker shrugged as he poured notebooks into his backpack.

“But what if he’s planning something big? Is there something I don’t know about? What’s going on?!” Danny cried out, pulling at his hair.

Sam swatted at his hand before he made any more of a scene. “I’m a little suspicious too. Nothing’s ever stopped Dash before, though I wish you’d try harder to defend yourself.” She glanced over at the bully himself, strolling down the hall towards them. “But I doubt there’s enough room for big plans in his tiny brain.”

“Hey, Foley!” Dash slammed Tucker’s locker closed, leaning on it as he towered over the trio. “I’ve got a bad English grade to take out on you.”

Danny was startled by how he nearly felt…  _offended_. “Am I not good enough to be your personal punching bag anymore?!” he blurted out. Sam facepalmed as he put himself in front of Tucker to confront the blond.

Dash scrunched his nose as he studied Danny, a strange emotion in his eyes. “I made a deal to stop picking on you for a while.” The three gaped, frozen. He continued with a smirk, “But it didn’t say anything about your loser friends,” as he side-stepped to grab Tucker’s collar.

“With who? Why?” Danny asked as the shock wore off, but Dash was already dragging Tucker away, to Sam’s protests. Why would someone do something like that for him now? Why would Dash go with it?

Oh. Danny swallowed, mixed emotions settling in his chest. Maybe more people knew about the lab accident than he thought. This very well could’ve been not just an act of kindness, but an act of pity. He didn’t like that.

* * *

He opened his bedroom door with a sigh, ready to dig out the ghost weapons from under his bed and work on possibly getting them to function. He frowned when there was a box waiting on his desk. “I’d rather not have another surprise today,” he groaned as he walked over. His interest was piqued by the note laying on top:

“For your ghost troubles. -V”

He cautiously opened the box, eyes widening at the goodies inside. “Maybe this is a good surprise,” he corrected himself with a growing grin as he pulled out ghost-hunting equipment–new, clean, intact equipment, all painted black and icy blue.

“Look out, ghost girl.” He playfully pointed one of the guns at the window. “You’re gonna be sorry you ever messed with the Fentons.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels kinda weird putting way more emphasis on Val than on Danny... but this is kinda a Val-centric AU, soooooo...
> 
> I think there's gonna be one more part from a third POV, which will probably be longer than this one.
> 
> (Originally posted on Tumblr Mar. 15, 2019.)


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (DannyMay 2019 Day 23: Scream [It’s still the 23rd somewhere in the world, right?]
> 
> DannyMay 2019 Week 4: Dreams)
> 
> Hopefully, this is a decent concluding chapter! And decently uses the prompts! They helped so much to get this written, but I struggled a lot, so I am mostly happy for it to be finished.
> 
> Tumblr crosspost: https://lilaclily00.tumblr.com/post/185101987152/apologies-3
> 
> On with the story!

Val was missing.

That was the consensus when all the other A-listers had met up at lunch and realized that none of them had seen her in morning periods and no one's texts had been answered.

Dash wasn't an idiot. He would've noticed if anyone on the A-list wasn't at school, then would’ve proceeded to not worry about it. He wouldn't have even bothered with checking up on any of them by text. With how often some of them (read: Paulina) skipped anyways, there was no need to worry or feel responsible for them, besides perhaps cover their backs if a teacher was suspicious.

But this was Val. 

Val, who spent the whole day on her phone.

Val, who always prided herself on having everything,  _ including  _ good grades. She just about never missed school, where she had the opportunity to achieve  _ and  _ show off her newest clothes.

Val, who took MMA after school for years.

Val, who recently became kind of literally dead, a secret that could lead to a  _ lot  _ of bad stuff if it came out--which admittedly seemed very likely to happen with how impossible she'd found it to control her new powers.

He couldn't say for sure what, but something  _ had  _ to have happened to her. 

"Should someone go check on her?" Paulina voiced, biting her lip, picking at the questionable school lasagna on her tray.

Dash deliberated for a couple seconds. "I can. I rode my bike to school," he offered, shoveling lasagna into his mouth. After swallowing, he added, "And I don't have any absences for History yet."

"You sure, man?" Kwan frowned. "Your parents won't be happy about you missing a class if it wasn't because of football."

Dash shrugged in lieu of a vocal response, seeing as there was lasagna in his mouth again. He could live with his parents throwing a tantrum later. He tried to keep them happy most of the time, but they hardly ever were. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered.

After a few more mixed messages of encouragement and caution from his friends, Dash waved them off and pushed the rest of his tray to Kwan. He meandered out of the cafeteria and hid out of sight from staff wandering the halls, then snuck to the bike racks and successfully made it off school property.

It didn't take long to reach Val’s place. He wasn’t terribly fazed when he knocked harshly on the front door and no one answered. He went around back to right under her curtained bedroom window and searched for something to throw at it, ultimately settling on a small rock on the ground. It only took a few seconds for him to get a reaction, a frustrated growl that was  _ so  _ Valerie, especially because he could hear it from all the way down there.

“So you  _ are  _ alive!” he shouted up with a grin, then winced internally. Not the right word to use. “Let me in!”

“I can’t!” she shouted back, some sort of strange echo in her voice.

Dash looked around them; no one in sight. “Why not?”

“I... I _physically_ _can’t,_ ” she enunciated behind the curtain, something that sounded like pain in there behind the echo. If his suspicions were correct, it was more likely painfully embarrassed--she must’ve found herself unable to touch anything.

“Then come outside!” he tried, ignoring the pang of guilt that hit him at that realization.

"...Can’t do that either."

Dash threw the rock again. This time, a white-haired girl poked her head out the window--wait,  _ through _ the window--to properly glare at him with glowing red eyes. He startled at her appearance; he'd only seen it once before, in the accident. She blinked and eeped, flinging herself back out of sight into the room.

"Give me a minute," she called again, her voice nervous but resigned. "Go to the back door."

Dash scrunched his eyebrows, but nodded and walked to the back end of the house. He stood there, tapping his foot, mind ruminating on Val's altered appearance at the window. He felt a strange sensation on his arm, like when things were so cold they felt hot. He yelped, then yelped louder as the sensation yanked at him and pulled him through the unopened door. It immediately released him once he had stumbled inside, and he rubbed at his arm for the tingling to go away.

"Sorry, that's the best I could do," Val's voice said. He flinched, hearing it right next to him. It still sounded like her, but not quite, and not just because of the echoing quality. He couldn't help but feel like it sounded like a supernatural imitation of her.

"At least it worked," Dash muttered, dropping his arm even though it had not ceased the apparent after-effects of... whatever that was. He glanced over to his friend, then corrected his gaze when her face was higher up than usual. She floated at his own height, her mouth twisted apprehensively.

"Yeah. You're the first person I've seen or talked to since I got... stuck."

Dash had a hard time looking at her in the eyes, the unnatural glowing eyes, and turned his sights instead to watching her hair float around her. It seemed he was going to need to get used to this. "When'd you get stuck?"

"In the middle of the night. I couldn't sleep, so I figured I might as well practice." Valerie hugged herself, curling up in the air. "I've been trying to go back to normal all morning. I was hoping I'd at least manage to do it before lunch ended, but now I don't know if I ever will!" Dash's eyes were drawn back to hers when her haunting gaze turned harried and desperate. "Am I just gonna be a ghost now?"

"No," he told her, face hardening with determination. It was his fault she was in this mess in the first place, and he refused to believe the mess could be even worse than they thought. They did not kill her. He did not kill her. "There's gotta be something you haven't tried yet."

"Yeah, like what? You know even less of what's going on than I do!" 

"Two heads are still better than one." Dash glanced to the door. "I think first, you need to chill a little. I think it's easier to calm down outside, so--"

"Not happening!" Valerie stepped--no, floated away. Dash suddenly realized her legs were gone, replaced by a tail sort of thing. It was so strange he couldn't look away. "I do  _ not _ want anyone seeing me. Why else would I have stayed in my house all day?!"

"No one's going to see you in your backyard," he said slowly, as if she didn't already know that. Everyone was at work or school. "And can't you, like, turn invisible and stuff now? You said that a couple days ago."

"I'm trying to  _ stop _ turning invisible,  _ Dash _ ," she muttered, curling her tail around herself agitatedly. "Let's just say things didn't go well last time someone saw me while looking like this. I don't want to take the chance."

He frowned, but didn't push it; with how much her powers acted up, it wasn't too surprising that she ended up in ghost... mode(?) by accident or something. Hopefully, it was only one person. "Alright, fine. You still need to stop panicking. What will make you relax?"

"I dunno. Most of my efforts to relax have failed because they require being able to touch stuff." Val glared at her tail, flicking it back away from her. "I hate what this feels like. It's like... everything's too numb and too much at the same time. After hours like this I'm going insane. Please tell me I'm not just a ghost now."

"You're repeating yourself," Dash said, only to distract himself from the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach at her description. He didn't know whether he wanted to understand it better or not--understand better just what his own stupidity was putting his friend through. "What about... music? That doesn't need touch." Not if he took charge of whatever was playing it, at least.

Val gave a single, slow nod, then hesitantly added another one. "It's worth a try."

* * *

He found some songs on his mp3 player that he knew Val liked, and sat at the kitchen table, lazily bopping his head, as Val slowly took to lounging in the air. She swayed to the beat, but it didn’t seem like she was really relaxing _. _

"C'mon, I thought you were always the life of the party," Val's ghostly voice teased halfway through the third song.

He raised his eyebrow; that comment was better reserved for a situation that wasn't  _ this _ . But maybe she needed some sense of normalcy for a second.

"And I thought you were the queen of karaoke," he tried, folding his arms challengingly.

She did not react to that quite like he had hoped, glancing away and looking like she didn't know what to do with her hands. He realized belatedly that she probably didn't like the distortion in her voice at the moment any more than he did.

He drummed his fingers on the table for a few seconds, then turned back to the player. Perhaps what she needed was a hype song. He put on Dumpty Humpty's classic hit "I Punch You in My Dreams (A Lot)", one he knew by heart because the majority of it was just the title repeated a bunch of times.

" _ I punch you in my dreams! _ " he shouted more than sang, and Val cringed, putting her hands up to her ears, then stopping to glare at her palms.

"Ugh, that doesn't even work," he heard her groan as he stood up, a giant grin on his face.

" _ I punch you in my dreams! _ " He pointed at her to finish the line, but she was instead staring at him like he grew a second head.

"This song stopped being cool in middle school!" she shouted over the insane instrumental.

"Nothing stops being cool until I say it is," he declared, watching as she reoriented herself to a standing position, rolling her red eyes. 

Something about that so-very-human action eased a bit of his worry. He couldn't put what the worry was into words, but... it was there. His friend really was there in front of him, no matter how different she seemed.

The next line came up, and he "sang" along gladly. " _ I punch, I kick, I scream in your face! I hit you over the head with a bass! _ "

Dash air-guitared as the bassist audibly destroyed his instrument. Luckily, the bass line always picked back up soon on a spare.

"If you think this is supposed to relax me, it isn't working." Nonetheless, the corners of her mouth twitched up.

“ _ I punch you in my dreams! _ ” he repeated loudly, pointing at her again. She shook her head at him, fighting a smile. “If you don't sing, I'm not inviting you to my next party.”

“I don't want to go to your next party anyways!” Nonetheless, she finally started laughing.

“ _ I punch you in my dreams! _ ”

She tacked on grudgingly, “A lot.”

Dash grinned; maybe this was a good plan after all. “Louder!  _ I punch you in my dreams! _ ”

“ _ A lot! _ ”

Together they finished the chorus, “ _ I punch you in my dreams a lot! _ ”

She joined him in rocking to the next instrumental, white ethereal curls flying as she head-banged, her giggles infectious.

Dash held her gaze, making sure she was singing aloud, as they shouted in unison, " _ I punch, I kick, I scream in your face! I punch, I kick, I scream, I scream, I SCREAM!!! _ "

They both screamed, but Val's was significantly louder, and Dash ended up stopping to cover his ears and watch her, horror in his eyes. Val, however, didn't notice and kept screaming and  _ screaming,  _ eyes screwed shut. When the scream section of the song was over, a bright light formed around her waist; Dash now covered up his eyes to not go blind. He heard Val topple onto the ground and hurried to help her up--her  _ human _ body up, dressed warmly from the previous night.

"We... we did it!" Val breathed, patting herself down once standing, a relieved grin stretched across her whole face. "That worked!"

Dash turned off the music and wore a smile, but more of a mask, as she continued to ramble, pacing the kitchen. She pondered aloud the possible reasons why it worked--though she admitted screaming was therapeutic, she liked connecting it to the practice of shouting in her MMA class to move more energy from oneself out.

Val turned back to him, triumph in her eyes. "Would you mind waiting a few more minutes so I can get ready for school?"

"Well, duh," was his reply, and he sat back down at the table as she hurried out of the kitchen to her room. With her gone, he let out a sigh big enough to sag his whole body. He propped his elbows onto the table and buried his face in his hands. He hadn't expected to be so affected by that.

Dash remembered Val's scream.

It was really only a few days ago when he heard her screaming in agony, undergoing torture as the portal  _ did _ something to her, put her through the kind of pain he couldn't even imagine. The kind of pain he was this close to going through himself.

This scream wasn't the same, he knew that, but... apparently, it was close enough.

He was glad to help somehow, but hated that it ended up being that way, a way that unexpectedly made his heart ache and pound. But he had no right to complain, not really. He couldn't complain about what he was going through, because he wasn't  _ going through _ anything. He wasn't the one living through this, he was just the one that almost did, and had to watch someone else do it instead.

He rubbed his eyes with his hands, and quietly groaned out, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" He jumped and turned to the doorway--Val had just come in, more silent than she'd ever been before, in a sweater and jeans.

He opened his mouth, then closed, then tried again. He didn't really know how to explain it. His face flaming, he helplessly gestured. "Everything?"

She breathed out, hands at her hips, and watched him for a second. "Apology accepted, but no more, okay?"

He stared at her dumbly, then stood and moved out of the kitchen, feeling the weight of glowing red eyes that could’ve been his on his back. "Okay."

* * *

 

Dash huffed as he finally got to hang up the phone and shove it into his pocket. “Yep, just got grounded.”

“I don’t get them sometimes.” Kwan shook his head as they walked out of school-- _ after  _ classes this time. “Still better than what Val’s dad might’ve done if she was still  _ stuck  _ like that when he came home. How did she get stuck anyway?”

“I dunno. I’m just hoping that was a one-time thing.” Dash shrugged, holding onto his bike’s handlebars. “Guess I’ll see you later.”

He hopped onto the bike as Kwan split away. He cruised down the street, suddenly aware of what being human felt like. The October chill on his bare skin and the warmth of his letterman jacket. The air beating on his face and through his hair as he glided down a hill. The droning, grating noise of the bike’s wheels and chain over the wind whistling through trees and the occasional car passing by. A surprising amount of sun coming through the cloud cover to blind him. How much of that would Val have experienced?

He narrowed his eyes and made his turn around the corner block sharper than necessary. He’d been distracted by these thoughts all day and they didn’t help at all. He needed to  _ stop _ , and at least  _ try  _ to not feel sorry. He was rarely sorry for anything in the first place. It was easy to act in the few other insistences, but  _ actually _ not being sorry when he already was was impossible!

He needed something to take his mind off of all... that. School didn’t work, but he didn’t expect it to anyways. Maybe food? Chowing down on leftovers sounded good right now. Or--

He veered to a stop to glance back behind him, up in the sky. Did he--? Yes, that really did look like a person. A person, hovering in the air! Decked out in a futuristic blue suit and helmet! On a surfboard-looking thing shooting fire out the back! He started to wonder whether he really was looking at a time-traveler, because there was no way hoverboards were already a thing.

He nearly fell as he scrambled to turn his bike to get a better view. They barely swerved to go over one of the taller trees, and made a slightly unsteady recovery. Apparently, they were inexperienced with this. It was still  _ so cool _ , though!

“Hey!” he shouted up, pedaling after them. The startled person lost balance for a second, but successfully froze their position in the sky to glance down to him. He continued, “Can I try out your hoverboard?”

After a few seconds, a fake-deep voice replied, “No,” and returned to flying away.

Dash couldn’t help but pout as he watched the figure disappear behind some houses--surely intentional so they (he?) couldn’t be followed so easily. He thought of taking on the challenge, but his stomach beckoned him to go home instead.

Well, perhaps he could catch a flight with Val, if she ever left the house, he considered as he turned back around for the last stretch home. Hey, if that dude showed up again, Val could hang out with him in midair! Even she would have to admit that’d be cool!

...And there he was, feeling guilty again out of nowhere.

What else could distract him? Using Fenton as a punching bag always worked pretty well, but Val asked him not to for a while. Wanted to try to start on good relations with the loser, she said. He didn’t think it was worth it, but agreeing to a favor like that was the least he could do so she wouldn’t be as miserable.

Not to say that he wasn’t going to watch Fenton closely. The favor ran the risk of him getting out of line in some way, and Dash wasn’t going to accept that. If Fenton pulled  _ anything _ on Val...

He was going to be more sorry than Dash could ever be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: almost had Dash pull out a pet rock instead of picking a rock off the ground, but I figured canon Dash would've punched me enough times by now.
> 
> Does this sound like him at all? Who knows. Am I glad to be able to sleep now? Definitely.


End file.
